Star Wars: Galactic Racer Shows Off Its Landspeeders
Star Wars: Galactic Racer just gave players their closest look yet at one of its four playable vehicle classes, and the timing makes sense — landspeeders are shaping up to be the workhorse option for anyone who’d rather survive a crash than avoid it entirely.
The new gameplay comes from the first episode of “Under the Hood with Hibi,” a video series introducing Hibi, an enthusiastic Ardennian mechanic who helps protagonist Shade in the Galactic League’s paddock, according to Niche Gamer’s coverage of the reveal. Hibi walks through the advantages, quirks, and build options available to landspeeder pilots specifically — and the pitch for this class is refreshingly simple: it’s the vehicle built to take a hit.
Why landspeeders play differently from everything else
Landspeeders are larger and more durable than Galactic Racer’s other repulsorcraft, letting them survive heavier collisions with both opponents and the environment, according to Niche Gamer’s report. That durability comes with a tradeoff in agility, but the developers have built in a workaround — a drifting ability that helps compensate for the added weight when navigating tighter corners.
That’s one of four distinct vehicle classes players will get to choose from at launch. Alongside landspeeders, racers can pilot fast-but-fragile speeder bikes, agile skim speeders, and unstable podracers, each running on different handling physics and specialized abilities. It’s a setup clearly designed to reward players for picking a class that matches their actual racing style rather than just chasing the fastest raw top speed.
Early hands-on previews back that variety up. Push Square’s preview, after roughly two hours with the game on base PS5 hardware, singled out the skim speeders as the most unusual to handle, noting they tilt at a full 90-degree angle when cutting through corners — something the outlet described as unlike anything they’d experienced in a racing game before.
The pedigree behind the wheel
Here’s a detail worth knowing if you’re wondering whether this game can actually back up its ambition: Galactic Racer comes from Fuse Games, a studio founded by Matt Webster, who previously led Criterion — the team behind the Burnout series. That connection isn’t just trivia. Push Square’s preview drew a direct comparison to WipEout in terms of pure speed and feel, while noting Galactic Racer’s large open planetary environments give it a distinctly different identity from Liverpool Studio’s classic anti-grav racer. Coming away from that hands-on session, the outlet said it walked away genuinely impressed by the combination of fast, rollercoaster-style racing and real story stakes — a strong signal for a studio’s debut title.
The story and setting
Galactic Racer takes place after the fall of the Empire, when an unsanctioned competition called the Galactic League springs up in the lawless Outer Rim, according to the game’s official PlayStation description. Players take on the role of Shade, a lone racer chasing both glory and revenge against Kestar Bool, the circuit’s reigning champion. The single-player campaign runs on a runs-based structure, with different event paths, upgrades, and consequences tied to repeated crashes — alongside separate Arcade and Scenario modes, and competitive multiplayer supporting up to 12 online racers.
Confirmed race locations already include Jakku and Ando Prime, according to earlier reporting from VGC, which also broke news that a State of Play trailer confirmed the return of podracing — including a cameo from Ben Quadinaros, the memorably odd Podracer pilot from The Phantom Menace, according to TechRadar’s coverage of that same reveal.
Release date, price, and editions
Star Wars: Galactic Racer launches October 6, 2026, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The Standard Edition is priced at $59.99, with a $79.99 Deluxe Edition adding three exclusive vehicles — the Kor Sarun: Darc X landspeeder, Kor Sarun: Ciza T speeder bike, and Kor Sarun: Rak S skim speeder — along with bonus Arcade events and a digital art book, according to VGC’s earlier report on the pricing breakdown.
For collectors, there’s also a $159.99 physical Collector’s Edition, which includes a physical model of the Kor Sarun: Darc X landspeeder, a physical banner, two pilot patches, a printed art book, and a custom slipcover with steel case.
Why this one’s worth watching
Star Wars racing games have a mixed track record, but the combination of proven arcade-racing talent behind the wheel and a genuinely varied vehicle roster gives Galactic Racer a stronger foundation than most licensed spin-offs get. It’s part of a broader wave of publishers taking real creative swings with familiar IP rather than playing it safe this year — a pattern that’s shown up repeatedly across 2026’s biggest releases, from Nintendo’s format experiment with Splatoon Raiders to poncle’s genre-blending Jujutsu Kaisen Rumble: Survivaton. Galactic Racer is making its own version of that bet, betting that four genuinely distinct vehicle classes and Criterion-caliber racing DNA can carry a brand-new IP inside a galaxy players already know well.
With landspeeders now fully detailed alongside speeder bikes, skim speeders, and returning podracers, Galactic Racer’s vehicle roster looks genuinely varied rather than just reskinned versions of the same handling model. Between Fuse Games’ Burnout pedigree and strong early hands-on impressions, this is shaping up to be one of the more interesting racing games — Star Wars-branded or otherwise — arriving this October.